Lee Bul: Utopia Saved

The first ever major solo exhibition featuring legendary Korean artist Lee Bul to take place in Russia

Exhibition project Utopia Saved (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

Utopia Saved at the Manege Central Exhibition Hall (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

Introduction
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Curator`s note:

'Utopia Saved' is Lee Bul’s first solo exhibition in Russia and for the first time presents the Korean artist’s works together with works by Russian avant-garde artists that have inspired her.

Utopia Saved Intallation view (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

The exhibition focuses on the architectural sculptures, environmental installations, and drawings that Lee Bul has produced since 2005, the year she began her journey of inquiry into the history of modernity. Her explorations have resulted in art that incorporates this history, in part through references to modernist architecture, utopian literature, and Constructivism.

The works on display will provide a comprehensive view of the artist’s journey, from her very first maquette for 'Mon grand récit' (2005) to her latest 'Willing To Be Vulnerable' series of immersive installations (2015–), in addition to preparatory studies for those monumental works that demonstrate the complexity of her creative process. Some of the drawings and maquettes are being shown to the public for the first time.

Exhibition view. First floor, 2020, From the collection of: Manege Central Exhibition Hall
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With a career spanning more than three decades, Lee Bul has steadily proved that there is an immeasurable, limitless world inside her awaiting exploration and expression. Trained as a sculptor during the social and political turmoil that permeated South Korea in the 1980s, she quickly emerged as a prominent artist with performative works that addressed then-taboo issues of gender, sexuality, and the body in relation to society. In the 1990s she gained international recognition with a series of provocative works, such as her scandalous installation of fresh fish left to decay and a series of sculptures of dismembered female figures that she named 'Cyborgs'. In 2005, as her interests expanded to architecture and landscape, she began exploring the history of modernity, which she merged with her personal memory and experience. This recent phase of her inquiry is the focus of 'Utopia Saved'.

Exhibition view. Second floor (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

The title of the exhibition, 'Utopia Saved', is meant to allude to the artist’s complicated approach to ideas concerning utopia as she engages with utopian modernism with empathy and originality, critique and imagination.

Exhibition view. Second floor (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

'Utopia Saved' invites you to experience the (anti)utopian world of Lee Bul. We hope it will help prove that she is neither a utopianist nor a dystopianist, but a genuine creator who is able to take a leap of imagination into anywhere.

Sunjung Kim, curator of the exhibition

Utopia Saved Intallation viewManege Central Exhibition Hall

Russian avant-garde
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As Lee Bul’s first solo exhibition in Russia, 'Utopia Saved' was curated to present the artist’s works together with works by Russian avant-garde artists that have inspired them. Including Russian art in this exhibition was so important that the final selection of Lee Bul’s works was made after the selection of Russian works was finalised.

Based on its availability for loan, the selection for this Russian Angle section prioritised aesthetic and thematic relationships with Lee Bul’s works over general popularity. For example, this section includes Constructivist architect Ivan Leonidov’s paintings inspired by his reading of Tommaso Campanella’s utopian fiction 'Civitas Solis' (1602), the same book that sparked Lee Bul’s interest and prompted her to begin her 'Civitas Solis' series.

Utopia Saved Intallation view (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

Russian avant-garde
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This section gives visitors a glimpse into the vast world of references and experiences behind the original art of Lee Bul. While utopian modernists looked forward to the future, Lee Bul looks back into the past’s utopian aspirations and their enduring resonances not only for inspiration but also to spur introspection and contemplation of humanity and history.

Utopia Saved Intallation view (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

Exhibition Highlights

Willing To Be Vulnerable (2015–2016/2020) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

'Willing To Be Vulnerable' (2015~) is Lee Bul’s most recent installation series, comprised of interconnected fabric formations such as balloons, tents, and banners that together evoke the atmosphere of a circus left abandoned. The circus is a product of the modern era that was once popular but remains largely only as part of our collective memory. The series recreates these obsolete images and imageries of modernity on a monumental scale, but by using lightweight and airy materials such as transparent film and tent fabric, giving them an elusive quality.

Willing To Be Vulnerable (2015–2016/2020) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Notably, the shiny dirigible hung in the mid-air, 'Willing To Be Vulnerable' — Metalized Balloon, was designed based on the infamous 'Hindenburg' airship, which was Germany’s proud symbol of progress until it caught fire and was destroyed in 1937. The futuristic balloon is made of aluminium foil, and then coated with a delicate cloth that flaps like a small living creature as air blows.

Willing To Be Vulnerable (2015–2016/2020) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

'The Willing To Be Vulnerable' series requires a site-specific installation and involves creating an immersive space with enormous fabrics; it is designed to form shapes that echo a landscape, a recurring motif in Lee Bul’s art.

Untitled (Willing To Be Vulnerable — Velvet #9 JTVP 3582/23 CE), Lee Bul, 2019 © The Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehmann Collection, From the collection of: Manege Central Exhibition Hall
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Lee Bul fuses organic and architectural elements in this work from her latest series, 'Willing To Be Vulnerable'. Using a specially prepared paint containing mother-of-pearl – a substance that is part of a living organism – Lee Bul blends biological structures with pictures of fantastical worlds. The artist explores the binary principle inherent in the natural and the artificial. Combining organic and non-organic components, the collage invokes Lee Bul’s earlier works in which she tested the boundaries of utopia and reality, as well as the boundaries of her own ego. The surface is made up of elements of the images that appear in the installations 'Via Negativa' and 'Civitas Solis', intermixed with spattered fragments of mother-of-pearl.

Civitas Solis II (2014) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Civitas Solis II
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Having adopted mirrors as a medium to create illusions in her 'Infinity' series of the late 2000s, Lee Bul used fragmented mirrors extensively in her 'Civitas Solis' series (2013~), further complicating the relationship between her artwork, the viewer, and the exhibition space.

Civitas Solis II
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'Civitas Solis' is a series inspired by Italian theologian and philosopher Tommaso Campanella’s 1602 book of the same name, translated as 'The City of the Sun'. Considered an important early utopian fiction, Campanella’s book describes a transparent society in a city enclosed by seven circular walls. Ironically, for Lee Bul, Campanella’s utopia gave rise to the idea of a society under complete control — a reminder of the impossibility of utopia.

Civitas Solis II (2014) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Deliberately constructed of fragments of mirrors, her 'Civitas Solis' installations transform the exhibition space into an unsettling labyrinth of reflections and refractions that is both fantastic and sentimental. From this series, on view are 'Civitas Solis III9' (2015), a fractured mirror on the wall into which you can look, and 'Civitas Solis II' (2014), a floating landscape of mirrors through which you can walk. For this exhibition at Manege, 'Civitas Solis II' is half the size of the original.

Maquette for Mon grand récit (2005 © Private collection, Seoul) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Mon grand récit
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'Mon grand récit' is the first series of work that Lee Bul started when her attention shifted from a focus on the body to architecture, landscape, and the history of modernity, in 2005. The title, which translates as “My grand narrative”, is meant to ironise Jean-François Lyotard’s pronouncement about the impossibility of “grand narratives” in our age. By adding the personal pronoun mon, the artist says she wanted to express “the necessity of devising stories — albeit subjective, imperfect, and incomplete ones — that can serve as consolation in the absence of grand narratives”.

Maquette for Mon grand récit (2005 © Private collection, Seoul) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

From the series, on view are selected drawings, including an anti-cartographic “map” of the artist’s childhood hometown that she drew by tracing and converging her disconnected memories of the village. Also presented is Maquette for 'Mon grand récit' (2005), the very first sculptural production in the series, which features a landscape drenched in pastel-coloured epoxy and littered with icons and tropes from modernist architecture and utopian/dystopian fiction. By juxtaposing disparate materials and jumbling references to utopian modernism, Lee Bul conveys a melancholic and complex relationship between reality and fantasy, beauty and tragedy, and eutopia and dystopia.

Via Negativa II (2014 © Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Via Negativa II
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One of Lee Bul’s first architectural installations, 'Via Negativa II' (2014) is an enclosed, mirrored structure illuminated by rows of bulbs, which invites viewers into a maze-like space. Inside the structure, the mirrored walls create countless fictional paths and endless reflections of the viewers themselves, leading them to experience confusion and disorientation. However, it also challenges viewers and impels them to keep moving to find a way out of the deceiving images. 'Via Negativa II' offers different views of the self in and in relation to physical space.

The structure’s exterior is also entirely covered with mirrors, on which pages from psychologist Julian Jaynes’ book 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' (1976) are printed plainly, yet in reverse. The text is thus not meant to be perused or fully understood, but only remotely hints at the artist’s theme for this work. Lee Bul has referred to the “glass architecture” of Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut’s utopian visions as an inspiration, but her take on glass architecture is not transparent but ambiguous, not futuristic but introspective.

Aubade IV (2015 © Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London, Paris and Salzburg) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Aubade IV
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Lee Bul’s 2015 installation 'Aubade IV' continues a series inspired by the utopian tropes of the Russian avant-garde and the ideas of German architect Bruno Taut. In its fourth iteration, 'Aubade', which is a song of lovers parting at dawn, explores the theme of a fantasy collapsing. The structure – a cross between Tatlin’s tower, Taut’s 'Monument to the New Law', and the Tower of Babel – is upside down and appears to be taking a nose-dive, like a missile hurtling towards a target on the ground.

Like Taut’s monument, Tatlin’s iconic utopia – also a tribute to fundamental human thought – was never to take flesh. In fact, the pacifist sentiment that dominated art and conceptual thought after World War I was quickly replaced by other guiding principles. Lee Bul records this turnaround in her work, inspired as she is by utopian social ideas and by the hopes for a better world and a transformed humanity that were ushered in by revolutionary upheaval.

Utopia Saved Intallation viewManege Central Exhibition Hall

Drawings and maquettes (2005-2017) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Drawings and maquettes
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While Lee Bul is better known for her monumental-scale sculptures and installations, her intimate-sized drawings and maquettes comprise an important part of her oeuvre. The artist always begins by drawing on paper — tracing what’s inside her and developing concepts. She also creates precisely designed and complexly structured maquettes for her three-dimensional works.

Drawings and maquettes, Lee Bul, 2005-2017, From the collection of: Manege Central Exhibition Hall
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More than just preparatory studies, Lee Bul’s drawings and maquettes not only embody her virtuosity but also reveal the tremendous complexity of her creative process. Some of the drawings and maquettes on view at 'Utopia Saved' were shown to the public for the first time.

Maquette for Bunker (M. Bakhtin) (2007-2016) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Maquette for Bunker (M. Bakhtin)
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Thinking back on her childhood, Lee Bul recalls: “I was always dreaming about some ideal place. And it was always a kind of strange house in the mountains, a bunker concept, but which from the outside looks like just a rock, or a cave, and then inside there was my home, a shell, a space”. Many of Lee’s utopian images channel the theme of a secret place, hidden from the eyes of strangers, like one of the bunkers that were commonplace around the military settlement where Lee spent her childhood.

Lee Bul’s installation 'Bunker' combines the utopian theme of a secluded safe haven inside solid rock with the philosophy of Russian linguist and cultural historian Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin elaborated his concept of heteroglossia, or simultaneous use of different varieties of discourse, when he noted the presence of a multitude of different, sometimes conflicting, “languages” within a single language: the high and low styles, the vernacular and the literary norm. Bakhtin investigated the possibilities presented by the use of such forms of discourse together, explored the resulting tension that arises in the discursive field, and pondered a synthesis of various “languages”.

Lee Bul, in her take on this, brings together fragments of disparate materials to form a complete work of art. Lee’s childhood memories of military bunkers, fused with her obsession with the perfect refuge, have in the artist’s mind transformed into a reference to the paper architecture of the German visionary Bruno Taut, who in his drawings combined natural objects with man-made structures. Blending into Lee Bul’s narrative, it seems that Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas tie together parts of a complex picture.

Untitled (“Buried memory tableau”) (2008) by Lee BulManege Central Exhibition Hall

Utopia Saved Intallation view (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

The Russian Angle

Dirigible (1933 © Central Museum of the Russian Federation Armed Forces) by Vasily KuptsovManege Central Exhibition Hall

The painting ‘Dirigible’ by Vasily Kuptsov showcases the diversity of the Soviet air fleet. In the centre is the dirigible, while airplanesfly in different directions, leaving tracks in the sky. A student of Pavel Filonov, Kuptsov attempted to include in his work both the method of the master of analytical art and Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism. The painting radiates romantic fascination with the achievements of Soviet aviation in the early 1930s. Before painting this picture, Kuptsov took nine airplane flights over Leningrad and Moscow, and once went up in an aerostat.A prime example of modernistic utopia, the painting connects with Lee Bul’s installation though a shared subject – humanity’s conquest of the aerial domain.

Dirigible by Vasily Kuptsov
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The objects and installations by Lee Bul contain echoes of utopian projects from the 1920s. The emerging new world called for both a new living environment and a new human.

Monument to the Last Soldier to Die in the Last War, Ivan Leonidov, 1948 © Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, From the collection of: Manege Central Exhibition Hall
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Ivan Leonidov is famous worldwide for his Constructivist works from the end of the 1920s. 'The City of the Sun' project is from a stage of his career that has not been studied to the same extent. The concept for the series was born during the Second World War. Leonidov first wrote down his ideas for the project in his notebook while on the front lines. There we see an oath for peace, an oath to be pledged in a place that had not yet taken form, where harmony and brotherly love between people reign supreme. 'The City of the Sun' project is not an urban planning solution in the normal sense of the word. It is a large-scale socio-philosophical concept told in the language of architecture. There is much in it that resonates with the work by the same name by Tommaso Campanella. Harmony is king in Leonidov’s 'City of the Sun' as well, and the people in it are also educated, physically developed, and spend their time creating. Spiritual life is of primary importance, while tasks performed to satisfy physical needs are secondary. Here Leonidov remains loyal to his own Constructivist past. He believes it necessary to keep building for comfort at a minimum and to maximize constructions that facilitate spiritual development.

Cityscape (Early 1950s © Shchusev State Museum of Architecture) by Ivan LeonidovManege Central Exhibition Hall

In 'City of the Sun', Leonidov has designed majestic, almost unearthly structures, pagodas, tents, and arches, while a huge gold balloon filled with helium floats over the earth moving around freely, subject to the vagaries of the wind. The balloon was put up by city residents, a symbol of the oath they had taken to maintain and support peace.

In all his future projects for actual competitions, it was as if Leonidov was building yet another piece of this ideal world – the United Nations Building, a circus, a project for the World Expo in Moscow in 1967… This city was never intended to be finished by the architect himself. He invites us, his descendants, to join him in continuing the work and conveying the idea forward.

Polina Streltsova,
Researcher at the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, head of the Soviet Graphic Art Department.

The City of the Future, Aleksandr Labas, 1935 © Pskovo-Izborsk Integrated Museum and Reserve, From the collection of: Manege Central Exhibition Hall
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The Pskov Museum acquired this work in 1986 from Aleksandr Labas’ wife, artist Leoni Noyman, who came to the USSR in 1931 after graduating from the celebrated Bauhaus. This piece shows one of the most interesting facets of the work of Labas, who had a keen sense of modernity. A poet and a romantic, his dreams and forebodings placed him ahead of his time. On the small canvas of the Pskov study, the outlines of fantastical architectural forms appear on the silver horizon over the water’s smooth surface. It is as if the city of the future were floating over the land, reaching the heavens with its sharply topped towers. Some of the work’s value is also derived from its previous location. It was part of the grandiose design of the Young Pioneer Palace, which the artist worked on together with some of the best artists of the day (Lev Bruni and Vladimir Favorsky), and which no longer exists.

Maria Protsenko, chief curator Pskov-Isborsk Integrated Museum and Reserve

Kiev (City) (1913 © Vologda Regional Picture Gallery) by Aleksandra EksterManege Central Exhibition Hall

Death of a Person Simultaneously in an Airplane and on a Railroad. Illustration No. 5 to Alexey Kruchyonykh’s book Explodity (Vzorval’) (1913 © Perm State Art Gallery) by Kazimir MalevichManege Central Exhibition Hall

The Stairs (1930 © Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow) by Aleksandr RodchenkoManege Central Exhibition Hall

Composition No. 212: “Circus/Stadium”. From the series Foundations of Contemporary Architecture (1925–1929 © Iakov Chernikhov International Charitable Architectural Foundation) by Iakov ChernikhovManege Central Exhibition Hall

Utopia Saved Intallation view, 2020, From the collection of: Manege Central Exhibition Hall
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In a meeting on July 17, 1919, the Artistic Council of the Architectural Studio of Sovkomkhoz (Communal Services Council) decided to equip the “first neighbourhood thermal baths in Petrograd”. The ideas surrounding communal living in those years did not envision private bathrooms in every apartment, and thus the construction of bathhouses was particularly important. This experimental bathhouse project, designed by the studio of Aleksandr Nikolsky in 1927, was partially implemented in the construction of a bathhouse on Courage Square (Ploshad Muzhestvo). The initial sketch and maquette were made as an experiment by Nikolsky together with Vladimir Galperinin, Nikolay Demkov, and Aleksandr Krestin. Instead of a regular, utilitarian structure, the architect wanted to create something unusual, something in the spirit of the then-popular Constructivism; this design was one of his Suprematist compositions.

Model for a bathhouse building in the Moskovsky-Narvsky District of Leningrad (version) (Second half of the 1920s © Russian Academy of Arts Academic Research Museum) by A.Nikolsky, together with N. Demkov, V, Galperin, and A. KrestinManege Central Exhibition Hall

Nikolsky’s elaborate concept included a pool in a courtyard under a glass dome, along with a solarium on the flat roof of the bathhouse itself.
A circular groove was to surround the complex, within which would be hidden the utility lines – steam, water, and sewage pipes. To avoid the escape of heat as much as possible the architect slightly imbedded the entire building in the ground. But Nikolsky was not able to execute his project fully, and the bathhouse that was actually built is very different from the maquette. And although the building was built with a circular form as planned, the technological capabilities of the time did not allow for a glass dome to be built on top.

Yekaterina Savinova, curator
Russian Academy of Arts Academic Research Museum

Model of an airship shell (Not later than 1914 © Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics) by Konstantin TsiolkovskyManege Central Exhibition Hall

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky spent more than 40 years pondering the problems of air travel. Noting the significant drawbacks of aerostats with shells of rubberised fabric, in his works the scientist gives a scientific and technical basis for building a dirigible with a metallic shell.
The volume in this dirigible varies, which allows for maintaining a constant lift at various ambient air temperatures and flight altitudes. Varying the volume is possible using a special constriction system and corrugated sides. The gas that fills the airship can be heated by pushing exhaust gases from the motors through coils. Another feature is the thin metal shell. The shell should be corrugated to increase strength and stability, and here the ridges are perpendicular to the dirigible’s axis in order to maintain rigidity.

In attempting to prove the feasibility of his idea, Tsiolkovsky published his works on air travel one after another, built a number of dirigible models, and patented his invention in 9 countries.
One of these models can be seen at the exhibition. The model was built by Tsiolkovsky in 1912–1914 from tin, with dimensions of 213 × 55 × 16 cm.
This model is mentioned in the scientist’s work 'The First Model of a Purely Metallic Airship Made of Corrugated Iron', Kaluga, 1913
Transferred to the museum in 1936.

Lyudmila Kutuzova,
State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics, chief curator

Additional events at the Utopia Saved exhibition (2020)Manege Central Exhibition Hall

Additional Events

Symposium “Utopia Saved. Lee Bul on the Russian Avant-garde”Manege Central Exhibition Hall

Credits: Story

Organised by the Manege Central Exhibition Hall and Gwangju Biennale Foundation
Curated by Sunjung Kim

Co-curated by SooJin Lee
Initiator & director Anna Kirikova

Exhibition Architecture Agnia Sterligova, Akop Iskudaryan, Nadezhda Yegereva (Planet 9)
Graphic design Andrei Shelyutto, Irina Chekmaryova (Faro Studio)

Photographs by Vasiliy Bulanov and Irina Kolpachnikova

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions (listed below) who have supplied the content.
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